The Củ Chi tunnels — the tale of a resilient and ingenious people

On behalf of Bookworm, I’m re-posting Bookie’s journal of her latest travels. Enjoy!

By Bookworm

We visited the Củ Chi tunnels today. These were the tunnels outside of Saigon that the Viet Cong built as a headquarters, a trap, and a base for operations. Visitors actually see only a small part of the tunnels themselves, with the rest being above ground recreations.

The tunnels reveal that the Viet Cong were a resilient, ingenious, and very small people. Resilient because they functioned entirely underground despite massive US bombardments; ingenious because they turned the entire region into a death trap for US troops, complete with snipers and hidden holes filled with bamboo spears, metal spikes, poisonous snakes, and scorpions for unlucky soldiers; and very small because I found the small portions of tunnels open to the public hard to walk through and I’m only five feet tall (about 2.5 feet when bent double, as was necessary for me to traverse the tunnels)…

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Unhyphenated American female, born and raised in the Empire State and who like most New Yorkers, in spite of being a registered Democrat, I voted for the candidate, not the party which meant voting often across party lines throughout the years.
In 2008, coming to terms once and for all with the fact that Democrats and I had nothing in common, I left the liberal cesspool forever. Of course, I now have a grudge to settle after decades of being lied to and so I blog to right the wrongs and expose the lies.